TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 94

[Tobie Shapiro]

December 19, 20000000006


Dear People,

	This is precious time.  Neither of the 
kids is in school, so I could sleep in.  But I 
didn't.  I got up at 6:30 and doused my dreams. 
I went downstairs and put away the dishes in the 
dishwasher, went up to the garage and got more 
raisin bran, set out Meyshe's pills.  Oh I was 
busy.  But then I got to come in here and type up 
another Life Story.  This is one of my favourite 
parts of the day.  Not to say the day is all down 
hill from here, but I love working like this. 
Today, I get to pay bills!  What fun!  Good 
morning.  There's the sun.



                               ‡¤‡¤‡¤‡¤‡¤‡¤‡¤‡¤‡¤‡¤‡¤‡¤‡¤‡¤‡¤‡¤‡¤‡¤‡
 
ÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎ



It's Your Rear End

	It was one of the big Jewish holidays, 
Passover, I think, and we were due in San 
Francisco at a rented hall for the family 
festivities.  At that point in my life, I was a 
teenager, the extended family seemed to number in 
the thousands, and the holidays were huge 
unmanageable affairs that required my 
grandparents find a suitable facility to rent out 
and have the meal catered.  Still, my grandmother 
would bring the home made matzaball soup or the 
knishes, the charosheth on Passover, the gifilte 
fish and other ceremonial foods for the caterers 
to serve at the proper time.

	My Aunt Belle would have put out place 
cards so that the seating was not just random, or 
left to the tawdry decisions of those who would 
be seated.  That tended to work out with families 
seated together, and not much mixing.  So Belle 
would go to great pains to orchestrate the 
socializing.  This was always a disaster.  She'd 
put me next to Ronnie Goldstrom who would spend 
the time interviewing me.  Today, we'd just 
diagnose Ronnie with Asperger's Syndrome and we'd 
have some empathy and comprehension, but back 
then, he was just considered weird, and I would 
have gone to great lengths to avoid him.  We'd 
take a look around the tables to find our places, 
and then we'd proceed to switch name tags.  If 
Belle caught us at this, there would be 
consequences, namely, a sharp word and a glare, 
and she'd replace the name tags where she wanted 
them.  Then, we'd wait until she wasn't looking 
and switch them back again.

	On this Passover, my father was back east 
at a convention, and we'd invited Shirley Van 
Bourg and her daughter Julie, who was in the 
co-op nursery school with my brother, Daniel.  My 
mother was driving.  Shirley, who was huge with 
Julie's younger brother, Timothy, sat in the 
front passenger seat, and Dana sat between them. 
Daniel, Julie and I sat in the back.  This was my 
father's little pink Rambler, a fairly new car. 
We were driving along on the top level of Highway 
101, going north, just shy of our exit when 
something went wrong with the car.  Of course I 
was a kid, so what did I know about what could go 
wrong with a car?  I heard my mother say, "Uh 
Oh!" and heard a great deep groan underneath us. 
Then the car jerked itself to the center divider 
where it stopped dead.  All the traffic screeched 
to a halt behind us, and the lane next to us 
slowed down considerably.  People behind us tried 
to merge into the traffic to our right, and the 
lanes to the right of that had to slow down to 
accommodate the extra cars.  And of course, 
everyone had to look at the pink gNash Rambler 
stopped next to the central divider on Highway 
101 north just south of the Mission/Van Ness exit.

	This was not the era of cell phones.  No 
one could call ahead to the family gathering and 
notify them that we were going to be late.  They 
would all just have to worry.  And we are talking 
about a whole lot of Brodofskys whose worrying is 
the engine that could light up whole cities. 
Metropolises could depend on the Brodofskys 
worrying to run the great generators that power 
the lights and make all the wheels go round. 
There would never be a brown-out or a rolling 
black-out.  Worry would keep our city alive and 
awake.

	So, naturally, my mother, being half 
Brodofsky, started worrying about the rest of the 
Brodofskys worrying about us, in addition to the 
immediate worry of how we were going to get out 
of this jam.  When crises happen, the children 
look to the parents, simply assuming that they 
know what to do, and all is taken care of.  In 
this case, with the traffic whizzing around us, 
and the traffic coming the opposite direction 
slowing down to look, cars honking, brakes 
squealing, Daniel and Julie turned white with 
fear.  I sat watching the cars slow down and 
creep around us, and the growing back log of 
automobiles stretching back toward the Bay Bridge.

	We sat there next to the central divider 
waiting for help to arrive.  Where were the 
Highway Patrol when you needed them?  We waited 
for a long time, and there was no sign of 
assistance.  Finally, Shirley rose up out of her 
seat saying, "They'll come for a pregnant woman." 
And she got out of the car, stood on the central 
dividing ribbon of cement, and opened her jacket 
to reveal nine months of pregnancy protruding 
into the world, the wind from passing cars and 
trucks whipping her dress around her 
protuberance.  It was not a minute later that 
eight Highway Patrolmen drove up, their lights 
flashing and their sirens blaring.  Shirley 
climbed down from her pedestal, got back in the 
car smiling with deep satisfaction.  "That worked 
nicely," she said.

	The eight cops came to a halt by us, and 
in their tight uniforms sauntered over, all 
huddled in our pink car.  My mother rolled down 
her window.  One cop leaned his head down in and 
said, in a gruff voice, "Don't you know you're 
not allowed to park on the freeway?!"  He backed 
off, and another patrolman came to the window. 
"You're not supposed to park on the freeway."  He 
backed off.  A third policeman came up to my 
mother's window and asked what happened.  She 
explained that the car seized up suddenly and 
pulled over to the left where it stopped.  "I'll 
take a look."  Then eight Highway Patrolmen cased 
the joint, all poking and kicking tires, looking 
under the car, walking around it.  One by one, 
they came to my mother sitting in the front seat.

	"It's your rear end."

	"It's the axle."

	"It's the universal joint."

	"It's your rear end."

	The cops had called for a tow truck, but 
it would take the tow truck forever to get 
through the traffic jam.  Another half hour went 
by before the tow, lights flashing, made its way 
to us and pulled up in front.  The traffic got 
even slower.  By this time, my mother had 
discovered that she'd left her wallet with her 
drivers' license in it at home.  Daniel and Julie 
continued to blanch white.  The tow truck 
couldn't tow us from the front, because the rear 
wheels were locked, so the police stopped all 
five lanes while the truck backed up and went 
forward, backed up and went forward, backed up 
and went forward, to turn around and tow us from 
the rear.  Now, there was no motion whatsoever 
across all the lanes of the freeway.  In the 
front row of vehicles frozen in their tracks were 
two big dangerous looking motorcyclists, scruffy, 
bugs in their teeth.  They came over to help.  We 
thought, maybe from the size of them, that they 
would pick up our car and turn it around for the 
tow truck, but they just walked around the car, 
peering at it here and there.  One of them leaned 
in the window.  "It's your rear end."

	We all transferred to the Highway Patrol 
cars who offered to drive us where the Rambler 
was going.  Then, the tow truck hooked it up and 
had to back up and go forward, back up and go 
forward, back up and go forward, to turn around 
again and get us off the freeway.  We'd succeeded 
in stopping all the traffic and causing a parking 
lot traffic jam all the way back to the bridge. 
That is what they were talking about on the radio 
as the tow truck operator dragged us off the 
Mission Street/Van Ness exit and back to his 
garage.  There was the telephone we needed.  My 
mother called to the rental hall and told my 
grandfather what had happened.

	"We were all worried about you."  Indeed 
they were.  Grampa said that my uncle Harold, my 
mother's older brother, had volunteered to come 
and get us.  We were worn out and hungry and 
Julie and Daniel were still white as ghosts. 
Twenty minutes later, Harold pulled up and opened 
his car door for us to pile in.  "Haven't you 
ever heard of a taxi!?" he yelled, sarcastically.

	It was later on when my mother realized 
that through the whole ordeal, with eight Highway 
Patrolmen, not one had asked to see her drivers' 
license.  I don't remember ever hearing the 
diagnosis for the pink Rambler.  But it must have 
been the rear end.  It was our rear end.  I'm 
sure of it.


                               ‡¤‡¤‡¤‡¤‡¤‡¤‡¤‡¤‡¤‡¤‡¤‡¤‡¤‡¤‡¤‡¤‡¤‡¤‡
 
ÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎÎ
-- 




Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net